Blame the Internet: London’s burglars won’t even steal CDs, DVDs

Pity the poor plastic disk—London's burglars won't even grab them anymore. It's not hard to see why. Imagine yourself in black mask and gloves, creeping through the darkened Grosvenor Square residence of Lady Fincherton-Smythe, trying to decide what to stuff into your sack.

You see a huge pile of CDs and DVDs—recent, chart-topping hits that belong to Lady Fincherton-Smythe's wastrel son, Nigel "Pikey" Fincherton-Smythe—the sort of thing that might have brought in quite a few quid in the mid-90s. You hesitate; surely some of the lads round the pub wouldn't mind a discounted version of that Dr. Who DVD box set?

But then you remember that the sort of lads who don't ask too many questions about the goods you proffer are the sort of lads who now get their Dr. Who fix from the Internet's darker back alleys. Everyone else seems to use iTunes or Amazon's LoveFilm or the online TV "catch-up" services from the BBC and others. Stolen digital media on little plastic discs just doesn't have the same commercial potential it once did. You pass by the discs and instead pick up Pikey's aging Windows laptop and an iPod loaded with a horrifying array of Europop. Now these could still bring in a a bit of dosh. You sneak back into London's foggy streets.

“Years ago, you’d see a man in a pub selling CDs,” says Eric Phelps, a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. “Not any more.” Indeed, thefts of entertainment products like CDs and DVDs have collapsed in England and Wales, to the point that they are now taken in just 7 percent of all burglaries in which something is stolen. They are now targeted no more frequently than are toiletries and cigarettes.

Unsurprising. I remember reading several years ago about record labels trying to hand out CDs to people participating in focus groups or some such, and being turned down more often than not. They simply don't have value to a lot of people anymore.

Unsurprising. I remember reading several years ago about record labels trying to hand out CDs to people participating in focus groups or some such, and being turned down more often than not. They simply don't have value to a lot of people anymore.

Unsurprising. I remember reading several years ago about record labels trying to hand out CDs to people participating in focus groups or some such, and being turned down more often than not. They simply don't have value to a lot of people anymore.

Well, that and the music generally isn't worth keeping either.

Meh, even once you peel back the "above it all" or elitist attitudes towards music, and accept the idea that a lot of people actually like the stuff the labels put out, people still couldn't be bothered to take free things.

"It's all terrible anyway hurf durf" is a popular meme around here, but not really relevant to the conversation here.

What on Earth would anyone want with a CD or DVD nowadays? How many people even still rely on physical media anymore?

I want them. Unless I can buy the digital version for a greatly reduced price vs a physical copy (say $2 for an album instead of $10) I will take the physical copy every time. With movies I always want the physical copy - digital movie files take up too much HD space, often don't include all of the special features, and use compression which hurts the picture quality.

If I have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray I have something that will last forever in practical terms, so even if I have a HD crash I can still access it. I can always rip a physical disc to an electronic version, but starting out with compressed digital file there is no way to get the original uncompressed full feature version of the original back.

What on Earth would anyone want with a CD or DVD nowadays? How many people even still rely on physical media anymore?

I want them. Unless I can buy the digital version for a greatly reduced price vs a physical copy (say $2 for an album instead of $10) I will take the physical copy every time. With movies I always want the physical copy - digital movie files take up too much HD space, often don't include all of the special features, and use compression which hurts the picture quality.

If I have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray I have something that will last forever in practical terms, so even if I have a HD crash I can still access it. I can always rip a physical disc to an electronic version, but starting out with compressed digital file there is no way to get the original uncompressed full feature version of the original back.

Same here, use the CD to rip from, put back on shelf. I play MP3s and store CDs. If through some weird licensing thing, Amazon no longer has a way for me to re-download my music, I'll still have it.

What on Earth would anyone want with a CD or DVD nowadays? How many people even still rely on physical media anymore?

I want them because I do like the extra physical bits like liner notes, artwork, and extras (full-sized Poets and Madmen cover art poster!) that I don't have to print out. I like having lossless masters that I can format shift for portability. I like having media that will survive hard drive failures without worrying about having them backed up. I like being able to play them in rooms of my house that don't have a computer in them. I like being able to play them in my car without driving off the road because I'm fiddling with touchscreen controls on a tiny MP3 player.

In short I like them because they do things for me that I'd have to give up by switching away from physical media, and at the same time don't impede me from enjoying the benefits of non-physical media. So I have a CD rack in my room, big deal. It's not taking up THAT much space and it's nice to display memorabilia I've collected along with the music I enjoy. And if nobody feels like stealing them, so much the better.

What on Earth would anyone want with a CD or DVD nowadays? How many people even still rely on physical media anymore?

I want them. Unless I can buy the digital version for a greatly reduced price vs a physical copy (say $2 for an album instead of $10) I will take the physical copy every time. With movies I always want the physical copy - digital movie files take up too much HD space, often don't include all of the special features, and use compression which hurts the picture quality.

If I have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray I have something that will last forever in practical terms, so even if I have a HD crash I can still access it. I can always rip a physical disc to an electronic version, but starting out with compressed digital file there is no way to get the original uncompressed full feature version of the original back.

For me its Blu-ray, 320k MP3 if I can't get the CD, and vinyl records. Upscaled DVD still looks great on most systems and Blu-ray is still a bit more expensive. Nothing beats vinyl for sound quality. I always look for vinyl first and CDs or MP3s second. Physical media isn't going anywhere anytime soon, it just may not be the "preferred" delivery method for long. I, for one, prefer to actually own things and not just have the right to use it as long as i pay for a service or as long as their storage systems don't crash.

What on Earth would anyone want with a CD or DVD nowadays? How many people even still rely on physical media anymore?

I want them. Unless I can buy the digital version for a greatly reduced price vs a physical copy (say $2 for an album instead of $10) I will take the physical copy every time. With movies I always want the physical copy - digital movie files take up too much HD space, often don't include all of the special features, and use compression which hurts the picture quality.

If I have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray I have something that will last forever in practical terms, so even if I have a HD crash I can still access it. I can always rip a physical disc to an electronic version, but starting out with compressed digital file there is no way to get the original uncompressed full feature version of the original back.

Well, DVDs and BRs are compressed.

But yeah, the bitrate on a Blu-Ray is generally high enough that it may as well not be. And if, for whatever reason, you want to shift formats it's not like you want to re-encode from an already re-encoded file and add another lossy step.

As for audio, I"m not always particularly impressed with the quality of rips available online, either legitimate or otherwise.

If I have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray I have something that will last forever in practical terms, so even if I have a HD crash I can still access it.

*cough* *cough* - anyone with kids will know plastic discs have a remarkably short lifespan. If I had a quid for every DVD my kids have messed up, I'd have enough to buy the LOTR extended special directors Blu Ray display edition.

Not even mentioning bit-rot, disc decay and so on. Worse for home-burnt discs than factory pressed discs, but it still happens.

Quote:

I can always rip a physical disc to an electronic version, but starting out with compressed digital file there is no way to get the original uncompressed full feature version of the original back.

Are you calling DVD or Blu-Ray uncompressed? They are very much compressed. Playing a DVD on a large computer monitor will show you just how feeble the DVD standard is, especially once you get used to HD media. Blu-Ray is also compressed, just not quite so much.

To be polite, maybe you're thinking of feature / menu stripped rips, which is a different issue.

I built a backup server to deal with the problems many face here. Because movies are the least of my worries, there aren't many movies I watch multiple times (I wish I had the time for that) and I have a Zune Pass as an all you can eat buffet on music, much easier than maintaining a home collection, work collection, portable collection, etc, a simple backup process is more than enough to deal with the above mentioned issues. That's all keeping a CD collection is a lot of the time, a bulky backup. I do still buy some CDs and records as collectibles, but that's a little different. Most people aren't going to want my specific tastes as their own collectible items. Mostly though I moved countries a few years ago and left a huge box of CDs and movies at my parents place. I spent hours ripping everything I wanted anyway and it is generally worth less than the cost of shipping it.

But that's not the only stuff I want to backup. All my photos are digital these days, I'm not going to print them all to have a physical version. All my work and any professional development stuff I do is digital, I only write emails to people (instead of letters) and I write a lot of them (as mentioned, moved countries). Having digital backups makes way too much sense these days, rather than coming up with hard copies of everything I might want to keep. Granted, my backup server is probably more likely to be stolen though.

Unsurprising. I remember reading several years ago about record labels trying to hand out CDs to people participating in focus groups or some such, and being turned down more often than not. They simply don't have value to a lot of people anymore.

Well, that and the music generally isn't worth keeping either.

Meh, even once you peel back the "above it all" or elitist attitudes towards music, and accept the idea that a lot of people actually like the stuff the labels put out, people still couldn't be bothered to take free things.

"It's all terrible anyway hurf durf" is a popular meme around here, but not really relevant to the conversation here.

I can see a lot of this scenario depending on how they were handed out. CDs are fragile, and if I have a lot of things to do and lack a good way to carry it around all day, it is a hassle to keep it from being broken. Free CDs tend to come in a paper slip, and if you're lucky, a slim jewel case. Thus, it's a bit of work to keep it from being broken, and if it's broken, I'll feel a bit of guilt in causing the destruction of something that could have been useful for someone else.

I have a box of music CDs just sitting in my room which I've listened to exactly 0 times in the past decade. It's still music I listen to, mind you, but I just haven't had the need to re-rip anything in a while.

The vast majority of burglaries (in the US) are done by people who want quick money. Often for drugs, although money is fungible. That they aren't taking CDs or DVDs isn't because they are being surpassed by downloads; it's because they are hard to quickly convert to much money. But they always have been.

You can buy a used CD at a pawn shop for $1. Used DVDs cost $4 (with the exception of a few in-demand movies)). And of course the pawn shop will pay much less than the $1-$4 retail price for the item...if they are willing to pay anything at all.

I like CDs - you actually get lossless quality 16-bit/44.1khz audio instead of the compressed MP3s you get from online stores. I'll change my tune once Amazon and co start selling songs in their original quality.

Of course, the pirates already supply lossless quality and even 24-bit/96khz audio in FLAC format, but that's a different story.